Retired neurosurgeon and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said incidents like the Thursday shooting at a community college in Oregon should be analyzed in hopes of preventing similar ones from happening, but that gun control only works for law-abiding citizens and not “crazies.”
“One of the things that we do in medicine, when we see a big problem, is we analyze the data,” Mr. Carson said Friday at an event in Iowa. “Even if [you’re] in a laboratory and you’re doing experiments, and it doesn’t work out the way you expected, we still analyze the data to glean something from that, because that information helps us down the road.”
Mr. Carson had been asked what should be done at a government level to curb the type of violence that occurred Thursday, when a gunman killed at least nine people and wounded several others at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg.
“We should be looking at all of the incidents where we have these people who go out and commit horrendous crimes to find out as much as we can about what type of person does this,” Mr. Carson said. “Because we need early warning[s] so that we can begin to intervene when we see that type of individual so that that incident does not occur. That’s the way to handle it.”
You’re not going to handle it, Mr. Carson said, “with more gun control.”
“Because gun control only works for normal, law-abiding citizens — [it] doesn’t work for crazies,” he said.
SEE ALSO: Chris Harper Mercer identified as Umpqua Community College shooter
Speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt Thursday, Mr. Carson appeared cool to the idea of any new gun controls in the aftermath of the shooting.
“Obviously, that’s not the issue,” he said. “The issue is the mentality of these people. And we need to be looking at the mentality of these individuals and seeing if there [are] any early warning clues that we can gather that will help us as a society to be able to identify these people ahead of time.”
Asked by Mr. Hewitt how far to go into someone’s background, Mr. Carson said: “Well, I guess it depends on what you find.”
“If you find things that lead you further back, you know, you keep going further back. And you know, if it doesn’t look too suspicious, you leave it alone,” he said. “But you know, what I worry about is when we get to the point where we say we have to have every gun registered, we have to know where the people are and where their guns are. That’s very dangerous. That, I wouldn’t agree with at all.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.